By Vivian Sequera
CARACAS, June 28 (Reuters) – Rescue teams raced on Sunday to find more survivors of the two powerful earthquakes that struck Venezuela this week, with signs of life bringing occasional relief to a grim quest to whittle down a list of tens of thousands missing.
The death toll from Wednesday’s twin earthquakes rose to at least 1,450 as of Saturday as foreign rescue teams poured into La Guaira, the hardest-hit state of a country already mired in a deep political and economic crisis.
Dozens of buildings collapsed into piles of sand and rubble in the coastal state, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Caracas.
“We must report that the number of fatalities has reached 1,450 people, women and men who lost their lives as a result of the most brutal natural catastrophe that our country has ever suffered in its history,” said interim President Delcy Rodriguez.
Some 3,150 people remained injured, 12,721 have been displaced, and 774 buildings have collapsed, she said.
The government — headed by Rodriguez since her predecessor was ousted by the U.S. in a January raid — had thanked civilian volunteers ferrying aid to La Guaira, but then tightened access to the road, saying traffic was preventing efficient movement of emergency vehicles.
Later on Sunday, Jorge Rodriguez, president of the National Assembly and brother of the interim president, said rescue teams remained active trying to find survivors before it is too late.
“Each life saved is a miracle; each life saved is the answer to the effort of thousands of people to whom we will be forever grateful,” he said in a televised speech.
“We are in critical hours, in crucial hours to continue rescuing lives and to build camps where those people who have lost their homes, or who cannot return, for whatever reason, to their residences can stay.”
Families and volunteers spent days pulling survivors and bodies from the rubble before the arrival of the more than 2,600 foreign rescue workers, often complaining of scant heavy equipment and a limited official presence, as hundreds of aftershocks deepened damage and kept residents on edge.
So far this weekend, the government said at least 33 people had been rescued by Saturday evening, including several children, while tens of thousands remained unaccounted for.
Although the government has given a figure of hundreds missing or trapped, just under 50,000 people were listed as unaccounted for on a website promoted by the country’s political opposition on Sunday, a slight decline from 55,000 people a day earlier.
LIMITED TIME FOR FINDING SURVIVORS
The U.S. Geological Survey estimated more than 10,000 deaths were possible from the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes, which would place them among Latin America’s deadliest of the last century.
The clock is ticking for rescuing people still living amid the rubble.
“There exists a window of roughly three days, 72 hours, where the probability afterwards decreases that you can save people alive,” said Sebastian Eugster, the leader of the Swiss rescue team.
The 80-strong team had found multiple people alive in the rubble thanks to alerts from their eight search dogs, but had not been able to pull them out in time to save them, he added.
Saturday evening had already marked 72 hours since the quakes.
RESCUED CHILDREN
The U.S. State Department hailed the rescue of an infant by U.S. rescue crews on Saturday, posting a video on X showing helmet-clad rescuers removing the blanket-wrapped and wailing child from the rubble.
A Colombian rescue team also saved an 11-year-old boy, Moises, who had been trapped some 3 meters (10 feet) deep in rubble, after identifying his location with a scanner, Reuters TV reported.
He was removed on a stretcher with a broken arm, his eyes covered by cloth to protect them from the shock of daylight. His mother and sister were killed.
Mexican rescuers working at a collapsed building in the town of Caraballeda rescued another 11-year-old boy, Rodriguez posted on X late on Saturday, showing crews carrying a small figure on a stretcher out of the rubble.
Pope Leo on Sunday told worshippers gathered for the Angelus prayer in Rome that he wanted “to express my closeness to the Venezuelan sisters and brothers affected by the recent earthquakes” and expressed gratitude to rescue workers.
A senior U.S. official said on Saturday that a funding package worth hundreds of millions of dollars is expected to be announced within the next day or so, in addition to the $150 million the Trump administration had already committed.
The disaster could have political consequences for Rodriguez, who has portrayed herself as an agent of change even though she served as vice president under predecessor Nicolas Maduro.
(Reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas and Efrain Otero en La Guaira; Additional reporting by Diego Ore in Mexico City, Julia Symmes Cobb in Bogota, Francesca Landini in Vatican City, Akanksha Khushi in Bangalore; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb and Stefanie Eschenbacher; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Christian Plumb and Chris Reese)
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